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Home schooling your preschooler may feel like a daunting task, but you already have all of the skill in place to not only do it, but do it well. Many people do not realize that home schooling is for them until after their children have begun a formal education outside the home, so if you've already made the decision to say home with your children, you have a leg up. This is the time to establish routines and norms that will help your child transition smoothly into academic life at home. Here are some tips to remember.

First, find your rhythm. Rudolf Steiner, the acclaimed founder of the increasingly popular educational method called Waldorf education, believed that rhythm in all of life's activities is of great importance to a child's development. He taught that each day, week, month, and so on has a rhythm all its own and that working within that rhythm allows the child to relax and engage in his or her environment without the anxiety of wondering what comes next. This doesn't mean that you have to stick to a rigid routine, but rather have a general style for how your days and weeks flow. Chances are good that you already have a rhythm to your day even if you don't realize it. Now is the time to integrate your child into that rhythm and call to his or her attention the relative predictability of daily life.

Don't get bogged down feeling like you have to match formal preschool hour for hour. That will only make you crazy! Up until very recently in our culture's history, preschool was a non existent phenomenon and it was accepted that children would naturally learn basic school preparedness skills at home just by watching what their mothers were doing normally. That said, there are so many web sites out there with ideas for themes and topics that you can use to supplement your normal routine. Find resources that you are comfortable with, but make sure that you keep in mind that the beauty of home schooling is that if something doesn't work for you and your child, you don't have to do it. Just because you run across a blog that is loaded down ideas that seem to be working beautifully for that family, doesn't mean that these same ideas will work for your kids. Don't try to force it. We're gently educating here, not keeping up with the Jones.

Things that may never cross your mind as acquired skills are actually of great importance. Seemingly mundane activities like cutting a piece of copy paper to shreds or sorting the silverware as it comes out of the dishwasher are not only amazingly engaging for little tikes, but also important steps towards more obvious developmental achievements. It's easy to forget that preschool is not the time to whiz through purely academic tasks, but to build a foundation of experiences and a bank of usable vocabulary that will help the child master more complex tasks and understand how they fit into their world. Every little experience is valuable. Every smell, every answered why and chat about the seemingly insignificant, every touch of a new texture or taste of a new flavor is helping their brain make connections.

So relax and enjoy this time in your child's life. If you do nothing more than allow your child to participate in the activities that are already going on in your home, you are well on your way to creating a warm and loving environment in which your children feel free to learn, grow,

Learn more about this author, Skyla Chrisison.
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